BOL: Related items

Large Language Models in Bioinformatics: Transforming Data Analysis and Interpretation

LEGE — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 11:26:29 -0600

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into bioinformatics has ushered in a new era of computational biology. Among the most transformative advancements are large language models (LLMs), such as GPT and BERT, which leverage deep learning to process and interpret vast amounts of text data. These models are reshaping bioinformatics by enhancing data analysis, hypothesis generation, and literature mining.

Understanding Large Language Models

LLMs are AI systems trained on extensive datasets of natural language. Their ability to model context, identify patterns, and generate coherent language has proven invaluable across domains, including bioinformatics. By fine-tuning these models on biological datasets, researchers can unlock insights into molecular biology, systems biology, and beyond.

Key Applications of LLMs in Bioinformatics

1. Annotating Biological Data

Annotating genomic and proteomic data is fundamental yet labor-intensive. LLMs streamline this process by extracting functional annotations from literature and databases, predicting gene and protein functions, and providing automated insights.

2. Mining Scientific Literature

The exponential growth of publications presents a challenge for researchers to stay updated. LLMs can process large volumes of text to extract key findings, summarize papers, and identify trends, thereby facilitating efficient literature reviews.

3. Predicting Gene and Protein Functions

By leveraging sequence data and annotations, LLMs can predict the functions of uncharacterized genes and proteins. This capability is particularly useful for studying non-model organisms and orphan genes.

4. Drug Discovery and Repurposing

LLMs enable pattern recognition across chemical, genomic, and clinical datasets, identifying novel drug candidates and repurposing existing drugs for new therapeutic targets. They can simulate interactions between drugs and biological molecules, accelerating the discovery pipeline.

5. Generating Hypotheses for Research

LLMs analyze complex datasets to propose testable hypotheses. For example, they can predict protein-protein interactions, identify regulatory motifs, or model evolutionary processes in genomes.

Advantages of LLMs in Bioinformatics

Scalability: LLMs process massive datasets rapidly, reducing the time required for data analysis.
Versatility: These models adapt to diverse bioinformatics tasks, from genomic annotation to network analysis.
Contextual Insights: By synthesizing information across disparate datasets, LLMs provide integrative insights into biological systems.

Challenges in Applying LLMs

Despite their promise, LLMs face limitations:

Data Quality and Bias: Inaccurate or biased datasets can affect model predictions, necessitating rigorous data curation.
Interpretability: Understanding the decision-making process of LLMs remains a critical challenge, especially in high-stakes fields like genomics and medicine.
Resource Intensity: Training and deploying LLMs require substantial computational power, which can limit accessibility.
Ethical Concerns: Handling sensitive genomic data raises privacy and security issues, emphasizing the need for ethical guidelines.

Future Prospects

The continued development of LLMs tailored for bioinformatics promises exciting advancements. Specialized models trained on omics data, open-access platforms, and interdisciplinary collaborations will expand the utility of LLMs. Moreover, integrating LLMs with other AI technologies, such as graph neural networks and reinforcement learning, can unlock deeper biological insights.

Conclusion

Large language models are revolutionizing bioinformatics by addressing longstanding challenges in data annotation, literature mining, and function prediction. Their ability to analyze complex biological datasets efficiently positions them as indispensable tools for modern research. As bioinformatics embraces AI, the synergy between LLMs and biological sciences holds the potential to unravel the complexities of life with unprecedented precision and scale.

Pacasus: Correction of palindromes in long reads from PacBio and Nanopore

BioStar — Mon, 12 Nov 2018 05:26:48 -0600

Tool for detecting and cleaning PacBio / Nanopore long reads after whole genome amplification. Check the poster from the Revolutionizing Next-Generation Sequencing (2nd edition) conference in the source folder: https://github.com/swarris/Pacasus/blob/master/vib2017.pdf.

The prepint version is found on http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/08/09/173872

It uses the pyPaSWAS framework for sequence alignment (https://github.com/swarris/pyPaSWAS)

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/swarris/Pacasus

Now time is come to revolutionize amino acid sequencing by Nanopore technology

Rahul Agarwal — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 08:01:11 -0500

Amino acid sequencing by Nanopore recognition tunneling method

Address of the bookmark: http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/71198.php

LRCstats: Long Read Correction Statistics

Jit — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 04:04:20 -0600

LRCstats is an open-source pipeline for benchmarking DNA long read correction algorithms for long reads outputted by third generation sequencing technology such as machines produced by Pacific Biosciences. The reads produced by third generation sequencing technology, as the name suggests, are longer in length than reads produced by next generation sequencing technologies, such as those produced by Illumina. However, long reads are plagued by high error rates, which can cause issues in downstream analysis. Long read correction algorithms reduce the error rate of long reads either through self-correcting methods or using accurate, short reads outputted by next generation sequencing technologies to correct long reads.

Of course, some long read correction algorithms are better than others, and developers of long read correction algorithms will wish to compare their algorithm with others currently available. LRCstats benchmarks long read correction algorithms using long reads produced by simulators (such as SimLoRD or PBSim) where the two-way alignments between the uncorrected long reads (uLR) and the corresponding sequences in the reference genome (Ref) are given in some sort of alignment file and then aligning the corrected long reads (cLR) to the Ref-uLR two-way alignments to create three-way alignments using a dynamic programming algorithm. Statistics on these three-way alignments are then collected, such as the overall error rates of the corrected long reads.

https://www.healthcare.uiowa.edu/labs/au/LSC/

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/cchauve/lrcstats

FMLRC: a long-read error correction tool using the multi-string Burrows Wheeler Transform

Neel — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 13:29:28 -0500

FMLRC, or FM-index Long Read Corrector, is a tool for performing hybrid correction of long read sequencing using the BWT and FM-index of short-read sequencing data. Given a BWT of the short-read sequencing data, FMLRC will build an FM-index and use that as an implicit de Bruijn graph. Each long read is then corrected independently by identifying low frequency k-mers in the long read and replacing them with the closest matching high frequency k-mers in the implicit de Bruijn graph. In contrast to other de Bruijn graph based implementations, FMLRC is not restricted to a particular k-mer size and instead uses a two pass method with both a short "k-mer" and a longer "K-mer". This allows FMLRC to correct through low complexity regions that are computational difficult for short k-mers.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/holtjma/fmlrc

Nieduszynski Group

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:35:06 -0500

Complete, accurate replication of the genome is essential for life. All chromosomes in eukaryotic cells must be duplicated and then segregated to daughter cells to ensure genetic integrity and produce the large number of cells that make up a multicellular organism. We are using genetic, genomic and computational methods to understand how chromosome replication is regulated to ensure genome stability. By focusing on the basic biology that underpins cell growth and division we aim to provide new insights that may help our understanding of diseases such as cancer and congenital disorders.

More http://www.nieduszynski.org/index.php
http://www.path.ox.ac.uk/research/cell-biology-and-pathology/conrad-nieduszynski-group

orthodotter: Synteny plots (oxford grid)

Jit — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 07:16:16 -0500

orthodotter -h
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orthodotter - Plot orthologous genes on an oxford grid.
       -f      : input file, containing orthologous genes, default is stdin
                       species chr-name start end species chr-name start end
       -toPlot  : give the x and y sets and the color separated by double-dots,
                       for example set1:set2:red will plot set1 on x, set2 on y with
                       red points. Could give several -toPlot arguments.
                       To launch the clustering of dots, use extra-option 1=dist,min_nb_genes
                       where dist is the minimal distance (euclidian) between two points and min_nb_genes the minimal
                       number of genes in a cluster to be valid.
       -o      : output file, default is stdout
       -x       : resolution of x axis, default is 600
       -y       : resolution on y axis, default is 600
       -r       : radius of circle representing orthologous genes
       -format       : could be png, gif, jpg, pdf or ps. Default is png.
       -fg           : foreground color, default is black
       -bg           : background color, default is transparent
       -fSize   : fontSize, default is 1
       -filter       : check chromosome names
       -h            : help
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orthodotter -f Vigne_Banane.ortho -toPlot Vigne:Banane:black:1=10,5 -x 1200 -y 1200 -bg white -o Vigne_vs_Banane.png > Vigne_vs_Banane.clusters
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Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/institut-de-genomique/orthodotter

MAKER

Jitendra Narayan — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 15:59:24 -0600

MAKER is a portable and easily configurable genome annotation pipeline.Its purpose is to allow smaller eukaryotic and prokaryotic genome projects to independently annotate their genomes and to create genome databases. MAKER identifies repeats, aligns ESTs and proteins to a genome, produces ab-initio gene predictions and automatically synthesizes these data into gene annotations having evidence-based quality values.

More at http://www.yandell-lab.org/software/maker.html

Address of the bookmark: http://www.yandell-lab.org/software/maker.html

GKNO

Neel — Fri, 20 May 2016 18:56:37 -0500

gkno opens the world of complex bioinformatic analysis to people of all level of computational expertise. This site contains documentation, tutorials and information on all the tools that comprise gkno.

http://gkno.me/how-to/install.html

http://gkno.me/software.html

Address of the bookmark: http://gkno.me/

NCBI Prokaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline

Jit — Tue, 16 May 2017 08:56:03 -0500

NCBI Prokaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline is designed to annotate bacterial and archaeal genomes (chromosomes and plasmids).

Genome annotation is a multi-level process that includes prediction of protein-coding genes, as well as other functional genome units such as structural RNAs, tRNAs, small RNAs, pseudogenes, control regions, direct and inverted repeats, insertion sequences, transposons and other mobile elements.

NCBI has developed an automatic prokaryotic genome annotation pipeline that combines ab initio gene prediction algorithms with homology based methods. The first version of NCBI Prokaryotic Genome Automatic Annotation Pipeline (PGAAP; see Pubmed Article) developed in 2005 has been replaced with an upgraded version that is capable of processing a larger data volume. You can find a more detailed description of the new version of the pipeline in NCBI Handbook chapter. NCBI's annotation pipeline depends on several internal databases and is not currently available for download or use outside of the NCBI environment.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/annotation_prok/

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/annotation_prok/